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Lewis

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Lewis Surname Genealogy

There
appears to be both an English
and Norman French origin for the surname Lewis. The Old English leofwine, meaning "beloved friend,"
was one source. Lodovicus was the founder of the
Frankish dynasty and his name came over to England with the
Normans.
Over time these names became Lewis. In Wales Lewis could
have derived from Llewelyn.
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Lewis Resources on
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Wales. The English name
Lewis would intertwine
with the Welsh Llewelyn, often absorbing it as anglicization
proceeded. Thus the 15th century Welsh bard was sometimes called
Llewellyn Glyn and sometimes Lewis Glyn.

Thomas ap Lewis was killed
at the battle of Banbury in 1469 and his son, a landowner in
Monmouthshire, was
the first to adopt Lewis as a surname.

There was an old Lewis line in Breconshire and Monmouthshire which DNA
testing has linked
to Rhys Goch, the lord of Ystrad in
Breconshire in
the 11th century. John Lewis, born in 1594, was the son of
Lewis
Prichard and this John was the father of
emigrant John Lewis.His gravestone
in Virginia read:

“Here lieth interred the body of John Lewis.Born in Monmouthshire, he died the 21st of
August 1657 aged 63 years.The anagram
of his name is ‘I shew no ill.’”

The Lewis family
of Van in Glamorgan took the
Lewis name in the 1540's when Edward ap Lewis became Edward
Lewis. Thomas
Lewis, who died in 1736, was the last Lewis of Van.Richard Lewis, thought to have been a descendant,
emigrated to Ireland in the 1850’s.His
grandson, born in Belfast, was the writer C.S. Lewis.

The Lewis name is common today in Glamorgan and elsewhere in
south
Wales. William Lewis, born in Merthyr Tydfil, was a 19th century
coal mining magnate.

England. The English
Lewises have tended to be in the west country and the counties
bordering Wales. One Lewis family which came to England in 1685 were
Huguenots
fleeing France who had changed their name from Louis to
Lewis.

Lewis later was an anglicized name for Jewish immigrants in
London. Prominent among these Lewises were:

America. John
Lewis came to Virginia
from Monmouthshire in 1653, although it is often his son “Councillor”
John Lewis
who is considered the progenitor of the family.He was one of the richest man in Virginia of his
time.He inherited Warner Hall in
Gloucester county after his marriage to Elizabeth Warner and the home
stayed
with the Lewis family until 1934.

Meriwether Lewis,
he of the famed Lewis and
Clark expedition to the Pacific, was related to these Lewises through
the
youngest son Robert Lewis of Belvoir. He was buried in what is
now Lewis county, Tennessee where a
monument
was erected to his memory in 1848.

A line from Robert of Belvoir also went to
Kentucky with Daniel Boone and later, through Daniel Lewis, was to be
found in
Alabama and Missouri.A family reunion
of descendants was held in Franklin county, Missouri in 1957.

Another John
Lewis, this time from Ireland and of probable French
Huguenot roots,
arrived in
Virginia in 1728.He
was described as “tall and of great muscular strength and one of the
best
backwoodsmen of his day.”This Lewis family, pioneers in
western Virginia, ran the Lynnwood plantation.

Francis Lewis from Glamorgan
who arrived in New York in 1734 and was an early figure in New
York business. His son Morgan Lewis became Governor of New York
in 1804.

and
Nathan Lewis who came to Baltimore in the early 1760’s and later moved
to North
Carolina.His son Washington Lewis moved
to Alabama and a later Lewis, David, was Governor of Alabama in 1872.

Canada.
John and Elizabeth Lewis from SW Scotland
departed for Canada a second time in 1844, having previously departed
and
returned, and made their home on St. Peter’s Bay in Prince Edward
Island.Many Lewises were buried at the
Catholic
church in St. Peter’s.Another John
Lewis, this time from Pembrokeshire in Wales, emigrated to Canada in
1891,
settling with his family in Victoria, British Columbia.He was a cabinet maker by trade.

Moishe Losz became Morris Lewis on his
arrival in Canada in 1921.A Jewish
labor activist in Poland, he continued this work in Canada, something
which has
been followed on in their different ways by his son David, grandson
Stephen, and
great grandson Avi.

Australia.James Lewis came to South
Australia from
Wales in the Rapid in 1838.He ended up
farming just outside Adelaide.His son
John had a wandering life, first in the Northern Territory and then in
the
Victoria goldfields, before returning to South Australia in 1876.John’s son Essington ascended the ranks of
the mining company BHP as its Managing Director from 1926 and its
Chairman from
1950.

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Lewis Miscellany

If you would like to read more, click on the miscellany page for
further stories and accounts:

Meriwether
Lewis of the Lewis
and Clark expedition made the first overland trip across America to the
Pacific coast.Isaac Lewis was the American
inventor of the Lewis gun which saw service during the First World War.John L. Lewis was the labor
leader for the miner workers in America in the 1930's and helped found
the CIO (Council of Industrial Organizations).C.S. Lewis was the Christian
writer and scholar, best known today for The Chronicles of Narnia.Carl
Lewis was an American
record-breaking sprinter.Bernard Lewis is a
distinguished Middle East historian.Daniel Day Lewis is an Academy
Award winning actor, the son of the Anglo-Irish poet Cecil Day Lewis.Lennox Lewis was the world
heavyweight boxing champion from 1999 to 2003.
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